We're All Guilty
by Southern Spell
Summary: This is Otto's side of things. OCXKitty
1. Chapter 1

**This goes along with my other two stories, 'We're All Scared' and 'We're All Brave.' So be forewarned this story may not make sense if you're not familiar with the other two. **

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Kitty really isn't the type I'm into. I like them tall and redheaded, with blue or green eyes. Not short and brunette, with freckles no less.

Still, she's cute… '_But I don't like _cute, _I like sexy.' _

Sexy really wasn't in Kitty Pryde's description. Did that seem to be making a difference at the moment? Didn't appear to be. That stupid leather uniform fit her perfectly.

Something must be wrong with me. I was checking Kitty out when Jean or Storm were standing right there, and no Storm wasn't a redhead, but she was stacked. And there was Rogue, she wasn't bad looking either.

But when the hell had I actually started checking any of them out? Oh, right, when my sudden interest in Kitty cropped up and I tried distracting myself with other views. What the hell is wrong with me?

I took a deep breath and focused. It wouldn't be a good idea to get distracted. We were boarding the jet and getting ready for a possible fight to get Cyclops back. Not that I'd ever meet the guy but I'd heard enough about him. The plan was to get me close enough to grab him and teleport him back to the school. Sounded simple enough expect that this was some military base and getting close to Cyclops wasn't going to be easy. However I'd missed the exact details of everything because I'd been too busy admiring how well Pryde's suit fit her. _Fuck._

I take a seat, one that's not in the direct line of Miss Pryde and run through my bit of the plan again. I'd at least gotten that part. An easy snatch and grab. Most everyone else coming along were for distraction purposes, except Kitty. She and I would be running hand in hand through walls to until we found Cyclops and I'd take the three of us out of there. Great, huh? At least we had a pretty good idea of where Cyclops holding cell was, so it would be a straight shot, and with Kitty's powers it would make it twice as fast.

Why can't I just teleport straight to Cyclops and save everyone the trouble? Because I need to have first been somewhere before I can teleport there. Sucks, I know.

The flight there was silent. Usually there was some chatter going on, but not tonight. It seemed everyone was taking this more serious than usual. I reckon because everyone but me knew Cyclops. The quiet was fine by me, not that anyone would have really been talking to me anyway. It was a good forty-five minutes before we landed, and then Storm went through a quick summary of the plan again to makes sure we all got it. I liked Storm, and didn't mind following her lead. She was smart, decisive and could keep a clear head on her shoulders.

Everyone filed out of the Jet, and at Logan's nodded everyone but me and Kitty advanced on the base. They moved, staying out of sight of guards and cameras. I tracked their progress, while staying hidden. Kitty and I would stay that way until the confusion started. Normally Xavier didn't prompt violence, especially if we started the aggression, but Logan came up with the idea, Storm agreed to it and Xavier was just out of options on how to get his golden boy back.

"How long do think it's going to take?" Kitty asked it so quietly I barely heard her.

I spared her a glance. "As long as they need to." I answer just as quiet, then looked at her again for a longer moment. She was nervous. Not so much that she wasn't going to be able to handle what we had to do, but just enough that I could tell.

She was looking back at me, and I was thinking maybe it wouldn't hurt if it took the others another five, ten minutes longer to get the ball rolling. She was _right_ _there_, barely a foot from me, and when she nervously licked her full lips, I started thinking…well…I really wasn't thinking. But it's fine. Because we heard an explosion, jolting us both to the present and I mentally kicked myself.

"That's our cue." I muttered, irritated with myself.

"Ready?" She held out her hand.

I took it without looking at her and flashed us down to the farthest point that I could see, getting us as close to the base as I possibly could. Then we took off running as fast as we could. Bullets started fly but we were only about twenty feet from where we needed to be so we made a run for it. I was just about dragging her, and reminded myself to be careful because I could hurt her if I held on too tightly; she was a hell of a lot smaller than me after all. But she didn't complain. As we approached the building we needed to get into, she took the lead and pulled me right through the wall. Not a very pleasant experience if you ask me. As we kept moving through one wall to the next I realized it was she was dragging me this time. That was fine and all 'till she phased us through the damn floor without warning and my stomach flipped.

"Warning." I said through gritted teeth. "Warn me before you drop us through another floor."

"Sorry." But she was preoccupied trying to figure out switch wall we needed to get through next. She adjusted the grip she had on my hand and I loosened mine up, thinking maybe I'd hurt her, but the next thing I knew she squeezed mine and we were off again. Running through wall after wall, some rooms we passed through were empty, others had people in them. Mostly soldiers, we saw a few doctor types thrown in.

"Going down." She threw over her shoulder right before we sunk through the floor.

After my feet touched the floor of the room we had entered, I went to tell her that really hadn't been enough time to let me get ready, but her face stopped me. I glanced around at our surrounds, and felt the severity of it settle in.

"Oh my God…" Kitty breathed from next to next to me.

I glanced over at her to see a perfect expression of horror etched on her face. We were looking at rows and rows of man size cages, nearly all of them filled with people. People so pathetic that most of them only looked at us silently, not caring any more. A few begged us for help.

See, most people don't realize that this sort of thing goes on, experimenting on mutants, but it happens more often than you would think possible. I'd seen something similar to this twice before, when I'd been with the Brotherhood.

"Oh my God." I don't think Kitty realized she was repeating herself. It was appalling, she'd been unpaired for this and I left a bad for her. But not as bad as these poor bastards staring at us with empty eyes.

"C'mon. We need to find Cyclops." I pulled her along, needing her to focus because she knew what Cyclops looked like better than I did. I'd only seen pictures of him.

I half expected some refusal from her. Like she wouldn't be able to handle any of it, but she pulled it together and helped me look into to each of the cages to find Cyclops. I'll give her credit, she was keeping it together a hell of a lot better than I had the first time seeing something like this.

"There." Kitty pulled me to a stop in front of one of the cages but didn't move close to it.

I did though, stepping up and looking in. Sure enough, there was a tall guy with a cloth tied around his eyes, just sitting there.

"You Cyclops?" I asked, knowing he was, but wanting to know if he was lucid enough to respond. It wouldn't be a surprise for him to be doped up on something.

The guy cocked his head in our direction, and with a surprisingly strong voice demanded: "Who's asking?"

I smirked a little, glad I wasn't going to have to carry this guy out.

"It's me, Kitty. Do you remember me? Kitty Pryde?" She finally moved forward.

"No time for this." I told her. "Phase us through the bars so we can get the hell out of here."

She did so with no hesitation and I grabbed Cyclops by the shoulder and we were back at the medical lab between one heart beat and the next. Xavier and Beast were there waiting for us, and I got Cyclops on the exam table even as he tried to protest.

I backed off and was about to head back to the others to let them all know we got him and he was safe.

"Wait." Kitty stopped me, and looked back and forth between me and the Professor. "There are others. We can't just leave them."

"There's no way we can get them all out." I told her. "I can't teleport them all at once and we don't have enough man power to get them out any other way."

She looked at back at the Xavier. "There's got to be away to help them."

"We need to regroup first. We'll discuss it once everyone is back." Xavier said.

Kitty didn't look satisfied with that answer, so I tried to reassure her. "Probably a good idea. That way we would know what we would be up against and for many victims to prepare for.

I flashed back to the base, and hunted down Storm and let her know we had Cyclops. It was only a few minutes before everyone was heading back to the Jet.

I was pulling up the rear, trying to make sure we had everyone, incase I needed to teleport around and get someone, when a hand on my arm stopped me.

I turned and found Jean.

"I need you to take me back to the school." She had worry and urgency bleeding off her.

I nodded and caught the look on Wolverines face as he passed us, and figured I'd be just as glad to skip the flight back anyway. Jean thanked me before we left the jet and when we got to the medical lab. I watched her rush over to Cyclops, and it looked like she was crying already. So I headed for the door, and passed Kitty out in the hall, crying too.

Crying girls are not what I'm good at. Other than my sister I've managed to avoid them. But there was Kitty, standing in the hall by herself, face wet, even though she kept wiping under her eyes.

Keep walking is what I told myself.

"You okay?" I asked instead, not coming out as nice as I meant for it too.

She shook her head, telling me no, when all I wanted to hear was 'yeah, fine' so I could keep moving.

Kitty sniffled and I glance around looking for someone to help, feeling guilty even though I was pretty sure this wasn't my fault.

"Those were _people_ we left behind." She stared up at me, and it dawned on me those weren't just sad distraught tears she was crying. Hell no. She looked frustrated and angry.

I blew out a breath and ran a hand through my hair, trying to think of what to say. But yeah, nothing makes this sort of thing better.

"Why doesn't it bother you in the slightest?" She demanded to know.

I narrowed my eyes on her.

"I mean…" She shook her head. "That's not what I meant. It's just you seem like you're handling this a lot better than me." She took a deep breath. "Sorry… It's just that this is the worst thing I've ever seen."

I eased off glaring at her, and glanced down at the floor, before looking back at her. "It's not the first time I've seen something like this."

"You mean there's other places like what we saw?" There was disbelief all over her face.

"Worlds not a pretty place." I shrugged.

She scoffed and wiped at her face again. "We need to help those people."

Yeah those people did need help, but the truth was it was a little too late for most of them. About half of them were so wasted away I really doubted even getting them out of there was going to save their lives. I'd seen it happen before, when Magneto had 'liberated' captives. I'd once asked him why we even tried, did he just like watching them die? I'd certainly didn't have the stomach for it. But Magneto had explained it like this_: we can't save all their lives, it's true, but would you rather die free or caged like an animal? _It had helped me, but I doubted Kitty would appreciate it.

"And we will." I told her, because that was probably what she needed to hear right now. She'd learn about the rest the hard way.

The crazy part was I found myself wishing I could save her from that lesson.


	2. Chapter 2

**Book-Devourerx: thank you so much for your time and hard work editing this. You're amazing!**

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A few hours and a shower later, Xavier called me back to his office, where I found Storm, Beast, Wolverine and Gambit already settled around the room. Kitty came in through the door only a moment after I flashed in.

This wasn't the normal set up for a 'team' meeting. Typically there would be everyone involved, or just the more senior members would have a meeting. Since neither Kitty nor I were 'senior' members this left me wondering what was going on. Luckily Xavier cut straight to it, asking about what we found when retrieving Cyclops. They had an idea of the conditions, but since Cyclops really hadn't seen anything thanks to his powers, not even going in his head could really tell them what it those conditions were like.

Kitty and I were standing side by side, while she started describing what we'd seen. I kept silent, hands shoved in my pockets as I listened to her. She'd managed to take in a lot of our surroundings in the short period of time we'd been there.

"Can you estimate how many you saw?" Beast asked gently, directing the question to Kitty.

But when she hesitated, like she was trying to remember, I answered. "There were a little more than a dozen besides Cyclops. But twenty cages in all, so there's a likely chance that there are more people there than just what we saw."

Everyone looked either furious or sick, or a little of both by the information Kitty and I had just told them.

"We need to help them," Kitty demanded of everyone in the room.

Xavier nodded, but didn't speak. He was obviously trying to process the information.

"We will." Storm's voice was pure determination.

"How?" Logan growled the word from a few feet to my left.

I listened silently as everyone started tossing ideas back and forth.

"Hold on." Kitty raised her hands up. "Shadow and me can go back and just bring them here."

The collective group seemed to like that idea, and yeah, that was an obvious and simple solution to get people out. One I didn't have any objections to.

"We can set them up here, temporarily, to help them recover and get home," Storm said looking at the others.

"Wait," I shook my head, realizing that they weren't quite getting this, "wait a second. Not all of them were in as good as shape as Cyclops here." When she frowned at me, I continued. "This was a place they were doing illegal experiments on mutants right?" I asked, just to remind everyone. "Then we don't know what's been done to them-"

"We can ask them." Wolverine snapped at me, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Go ahead." I crossed my arms and shrugged my shoulders, "But do you really think the scientist always told them what they were doing to them? I bet if you're lucky one or two out of the whole group will know."

"Sounds like you know something about this." Beast's voice was nearly an accusation. Which was fucked up since I was a mutant myself.

"He's dealt with similar experiences during his time with the Brotherhood," Xavier answered effectively cutting off any further argument, before turning back to me with a nod. "Go on."

I got the feeling Xavier already knew what I was about to say, but wanted me to say it anyway. Probably another one of his team building steps for me. "And…well since this stuff is illegal there aren't any regulations in place, nothing to protect the mutant they are fu-uh, experimented on. So anything can be done to them, and normally is. We won't know how to help them without getting the files the scientists have on them." Even then, more often than not, it was still too late. But I wasn't going to tell them that.

Again the others started talking around me, trying to figure this out, and twenty minutes later a plan was halfway made. That was as far as it went, since it was late and people were starting to argue.

Just as the group started breaking up, Beast turned to me with a question. "You've seen something like this before?"

I nodded, eyeing the door, making it obvious I didn't want to get into details.

"What did you do for the people you found?"

"Got them out and did what we could for them."

"How'd that go?" Logan raised an eyebrow.

I shrugged, knowing full and well Kitty's eyes were on me and it disturbed me a little that I was reluctant to disillusion her. I tried to think of a positive way to tell Logan, but I came up short, and settled for a shake of my head. I didn't look at Kitty when I flashed out.

XXX

Xavier called me to his office before anyone else the next morning, for questions about how Magneto had handled things when the Brotherhood rescued people. I answered everything as straightforwardly as I could. There was no reason to sell him on what to expect. Things weren't going to be pretty. When he was satisfied he pulled everyone back into a meeting to get the last touches of the plan completed. I made sure to pay better attention this time around, not letting Kitty's cute ass distract me.

It was a simple plan, Kitty and I would be the ones to go in and pull out the captives. Me for transportation purposes, while she could get in and out of the cages without having to waste time unlocking them. Beast would lead the search for the victims' files, Logan and a couple others would be there to deal with any muscle we might run into. Not everyone would be going, because someone would need to be here to help the ones I'd be bringing back. It was all hands on deck for this, even if you normally didn't participate in Xavier's extracurricular activities.

When it was time to go, we skipped the jet this time, and with a little concentration I managed to get everyone to the holding cells. Beast, Rogue, Gambit, and Colossus went in search of the files, Logan, Storm and Icemen took up vigil, keeping a look-out as Kitty and I got to work.

Kitty went rushing into cages, pulling out captives and I started to take them back to the school in groups of twos and threes, where Xavier, Jean, Kurt, and Warren were waiting. I tried not looking too hard at the victims. I'd learned the first time doing something like this it was best to shut down emotionally. It may have may have been a cold way. in dealing with them, but it meant I was able to help them. The first time I hadn't known better, and had started losing it. I had almost cost the whole mission.

Some of these people couldn't even stand on their own, but those that could were helping those who couldn't, and all but dragging each other toward me as soon as Pryde pulled them out of their cages. Again, while I wasn't looking too hard at them, I couldn't help noticing that not all these were people were adults, some were kids. _Fucking kids_. Fury started rising in me, and for a moment I wished I was back with the Brotherhood. Magneto would have demanded that this base be burnt to the ground with all the doctors and soldiers locked in.

I teleported back to the base from the school, ready to take back my third group, and still ready to kill something. I struggled to push back the anger when a man that must have at least been ninety reached out a bandaged hand to me. A girl, no more than thirteen if she was that, was helping him stumble to me. Though tears were running down his face, the girl's expression was impressive: har and determined.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," the man repeated over and over when I met them half way. His grip on my hand was surprisingly strong. His gratitude made me uncomfortable. I felt like a fraud.

"Hold on to him," I told the girl, and watched as Kitty pulled another man free. I wasn't going to make the old man, clinging to my hand like it was a life-raft, walk more than necessary, so we watched the other man jog toward us as fast as he could with his pronounced limp. The second he reached us, I put a hand on his shoulder, and we were back at the school.

Xavier had things pretty well in hand, and I didn't waste time getting back. Some problems arose at the base when a few soldiers came rushing in, guns blazing. Wolverine met them head on, and the others were right behind him. Kitty only paused a moment, before pulling another prisoner out.

We were nearly through when Beast showed up again, followed by the others who'd gone with him.

"We got them," he shouted to Storm, and I took his group, except Colossus, back immediately to help with the ones ready at the school.

All in all it was going smoothly, with Wolverine and the others were keeping the soldiers off our backs. I wasn't having any performance problems with my powers, and Kitty finally pulled out the last captive from his cage. After that, I got everyone out of the base and back to the school. The medical lab was chaotic as the victims were being sorted out, and everyone trying to help.

Normally I would have offered to help, but at that particular moment all I could manage was to stumble out of the room. I'd worn myself out teleporting back and forth while carrying so many people with me when I did it. The more people I transported at a time the more power I use, and having to do it so many times in such a short space of time had drained me.

Leaning against the hall wall, my eyes were closing and I was focusing on pulling myself together. My knees felt like Jell-O and when I opened my eyes the world titled. Don't know what happened after that.

XXX

Bell was looking at me when I came back around. Her eyebrows were knitted over big worried hazel eyes and she was talking. Of course.

"…worried, but Kurt said you'd be find."

I blinked, trying to remember what happened. Then it hit me. I'd passed out. What a bitch move. Very good for my ego.

"I'm fine," I muttered, feeling humiliated.

"I know that now," she answered back, grabbing my hand. "I was just worried when I came here and they told me you were down here."

"Just wore myself out." I'd never done that before, but I'd never transported so many people so fast. Guess we all have our limits.

"Do you want anything? I could get you something," she asked.

I pushed myself up in a sitting position, and she didn't wait for a response as she pushed a cup of water into my hand she'd previously been holding. It was the best thing she could have given me at that moment.

"Kurt found you passed out in the hallway. You've been out for hours. They told me you were just sleeping it off. Maybe you should just lay back down and go back to sleep. If you were that exhausted then a few hours isn't going to cut it. You need more." She was twisting the ring around her thumb as she rambled. Both are nervous habits of hers.

"I'm fine," I grumbled, embarrassed, but she was right. I could still use more sleep.

"Otto…" She said as I started to get off the bed.

"I'm going up to my room. Calm down," I said, a little grumpier than I had meant to.

"And then right to your bed?" She asked.

"Yeah, sure," I nodded, before I caught sight of what I was wearing. My suit had been removed and I was in just sweat pants. Someone had changed my clothes? _God, someone shoot me._

I stood too quickly, and almost toppled over. Bell catches me, but struggles to keep me upright until I get my balance.

"Sorry." I let go of her, standing on my own two feet, feeling like a pansy ass.

"Maybe you should just sleep here. At least until you're steadier." Her face pinched with worry.

"I'm fine. Just need to get to my own bed." No way in hell was I staying there. I started for the door and she keeps pace with me.

"Otto…" She stresses my name.

"Bell…" I copy her.

"What if something's wrong or something?"

"I'm fine." I glance at her, and get a good look at how concerned she is, and ease up on the tough act. "Seriously. I just need to sleep and I'll rest better in my own bed." There's little to no privacy in the medical lab, not to mention someone could actually need this bed I was just sleeping in.

It takes a few minutes to walk all the way up to my room. My mother-hen of a little sister kept an eye on me the whole time, making me feel like I might suddenly pass out… again. When we get there, I repeatedly tell her I'm okay, even if the trip up nearly wiped out any energy I had, leaving me with no patience. I have to remind myself that she means well, and not be a dick to her, but I still all but have to force her out of the room. She only goes after I promise to call her first thing in the morning.

When she's gone I realize I was probably a little too curt with her, and hope like I hell I hadn't hurt her feelings. I was still trying to make it up to her for everything I'd done before. Shame burns me every time I think about what a bastard I'd been, but it's just one sin against me in a long line of them.

I exhale as I lay on my back trying to not think about anything. Not the shit I'd done before and not the people I helped free today.


End file.
